Jesus
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not "perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
Martin Buber
“In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. For those who enter into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance—neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven—but everything is included in the relationship. For entering into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but placing it upon its proper ground. Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presences…” (from
I and Thou)
C.S. Lewis
“When I attempted a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light… For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can, no one cares. Now, a scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable Something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in the universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, the bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.” (from
The Weight of Glory)
Terrence Malick
Badlands (1972)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
Martin Heidegger
“Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearance—as this being of truth in the work and as work—is beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth’s taking of its place. It does not exist merely relative to pleasure and purely as its object.” (from “The Origin of the Work of Art.”)
Saint Paul
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
Marshall McLuhan
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” (from
The Medium is the Massage)
Sufjan Stevens
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid
(from “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s long dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it, He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” (from
The Great Gatsby)
Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Story (1953)
George Steiner
“All representations, even the most abstract, infer a rendezvous with intelligibility or, at the least, with a strangeness attenuated, qualified by observance and willed form. Apprehension (the meeting with the other) signifies both fear and perception. The continuum between both, the modulation from one to the other, lie at the source of poetry and the arts.” (from
Real Presences)
Paul Tillich
“What is the nature of a being that is able to produce art? Man is finite. He is, as one could say, mixed of being and nonbeing. Once he was not. Now he is and some time he will not be. He is not by himself, but thrown into existence and he will be thrown out of existence and cease to be for himself. He is delivered to the flux of time which runs from the past to the future through the ever-moving point which is called the present. He is aware of the infinite. He is aware that he belongs to it. But he is also aware that he is excluded from it… Out of the anxiety, and the double awareness that we are finite and that we belong to infinity from which we are excluded, the urge arises to express the essential unity of that which we are in symbols which are religious and artistic.” (from
On Art and Architecture)
Dorothy Sayers
“Poets have, indeed, often communicated in their own mode of expression truths identical with the theologians’ truths; but just because of the difference in the modes of expression, we often fail to see the identity of the statements.” (from
The Mind of the Maker)
Over the Rhine
What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be.
Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy.
And I use these words pretty loosely.
There's so much more to life than words.
(from “Latter Days”)
Soren Kierkegaard
“He will grant thee a hiding place within Him, and once hidden in Him he will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners... He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, 'Come hither'; no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes--yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.” (from
Training in Christianity)
Richard Linklater
Before Sunrise (1995)
Waking Life (2001)
Before Sunset (2004)
George MacDonald
“In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they; we see in them, in a distant way, as in a glass darkly, the face of the unseen. It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them.” (from
The Voice of Job)
Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity
John Steinbeck
“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.” (from
East of Eden)
Bob Dylan
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care,
pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside
to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.
(from “Simple Twist of Fate”)
Walker Percy
“What is the malaise? You ask. The malaise is the pain of loss. The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and the world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo’s ghost.” (from
The Moviegoer)
Sofia Coppola
Virgin Suicides (2000)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Kathleen Norris
“Church is to be participated in and not consumed. The point is not what one gets out of it, but the worship of God; the service takes place both because of and despite the needs, strengths, and frailties of the people present. How else could it be?” (from
Dakota)
Marilynne Robinson
“Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!” (from
Gilead)
N.T. Wright
“Preaching the gospel means announcing Jesus as Lord of the world; and, unless we are prepared to contradict ourselves with every breath we take, we cannot make that announcement without seeking to bring that lordship to bear over every aspect of the world.” (from
What Saint Paul Really Said).
David Bazan
It's weird to think of all the things
That have not been keeping up with the times
It's ten o' clock the sun is down
Just begun to set the western hills on fire
I hear that you don't change
How do you expect to keep up with the trends
You won't survive the information age
Unless you plan to change the truth to accommodate the brilliance of man
The brilliance of man
(from “Letter From a Concerned Follower”)
G.K. Chesterton
“Gazing at some detail like a bird or a cloud, we can all ignore its awful blue background; we can neglect the sky; and precisely because it bears down upon us with an annihilating force it is felt as nothing. A thing of this kind can only be an impression and a rather subtle impression; but to me it is a very strong impression made by pagan literature and religion. I repeat that in our special sacramental sense there is, of course, the absence of the presence of God. But there is in a very real sense the presence of the absence of God. We feel it in the unfathomable sadness of pagan poetry; for I doubt if there was ever in all the marvelous manhood of antiquity a man who was happy as St. Francis was happy.” (from
The Everlasting Man)
Gus Van Sant
Elephant (2003)
Paranoid Park (2008)
Solomon
"I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by." (Ecclesiastes 3:10-15).
Jack Kerouac
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” (from
On the Road)
St. Augustine
"Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee..."
Martin Luther
“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Son (2002)
The Child (2005)
Great post Brett, maybe you’ll do one for Europe one of these days. Just want to correct you on a little point – the 24/7 movement started in England, not Kansas City.
Thanks for the correction- I was thinking of the International House of Prayer, which started in KC in 1999, around the same time 24/7 was starting in the UK. I’ll make the change.
I agree. Yet, don’t those locations seem rather… well.. expected?
What about underdog hotspots like Lancaster, PA? You’d be amazed…
I couldn’t help but notice that Chicago was the only city for which you didn’t list at least one example of a congregation attractive to hipsters.
hooray, kansas city made the list.
if you were doing a top christian hipster places in the midwest, i would bring up that columbia, missouri has a pretty substantial christian hipster population. with 4 coffee shops at one intersection in the heart of downtown. not to mention the indie flick rental store & cinema + coffee shop + hipster dive bar + at night known as RagTag, it’s not hard to run into an HYC (hip, young christian).
& the various campus ministries plus the continuous cycle of residents from the kansas city & st. louis area being shuffled into the area, then dispersed back out into larger cities or to their roots.
not to mention the rapidly growing True/False film festival each year where local churches and university students get involved to make it happen.
i could go on. columbia is pretty hip for being in mid-mo.
How could you leave off Grace Presbyterian and Church of the Resurrection (“Rez”) in DC? They are far more hipster than NCC or CapBap (the only two I recognized in your DC list). I’ve attended Grace three years. Frankly we consider CapBap rather zealous and somewhat closed, the opposite of hipster.
word, from someone who attends church of the advent. hippest of all in columbia heights slash adams morgan.
It’s true. The Falls Church is pretty establishment too. Plenty of hipsters there, but they tend to leave after awhile to either go to hipper places like Rez and Grace or (the more hipster move?) to “higher” Anglican churches (ie. “candles are nice and all, but it’s not really traditional unless the priest covers you in a cloud of incense and douses you with the oil until you drip. And you know hymns are just the CCM of the past – Bach or Tallis, maybe Arvo Part if you want to get edgy”)
Ebenezers at NCC also is a pretty terrible coffeehouse. They have a reputation as having coffee barely more tolerable than Starbucks. You’re more likely to find hipster Christians at Peregrine Espresso and Chinatown Coffee. Sorry, I’ll stop badmouthing them. But your list has some noticeable gaps and I would hate for someone to visit Ebenezers with high expectations.
The mix of earth tones, silent flat screen tvs, XM radio, and subtly available Christian lit makes Ebs a hipster standard, whether the coffee is any good or not. With church being held in the basement, I’d say the inclusion of Ebs is spot on.
I would also suggest Pittsburgh, PA. There is a particular church–Bellevue Presbyterian–that sits right next to a university campus. The church is basically a giant hipster magnet.
I’ve lived in Chicago, Kansas City, LA, Denver, and DC in the last 5 years. DC is too high on your list. Christians here are too busy researching public policy to be hip. Although, we do drink quite a bit…
hooray, kansas city made the list.
if you were doing a top christian hipster places in the midwest, i would bring up that columbia, missouri has a pretty substantial christian hipster population. with 4 coffee shops at one intersection in the heart of downtown. not to mention the indie flick rental store & cinema + coffee shop + hipster dive bar + at night known as RagTag, it’s not hard to run into an HYC (hip, young christian).
& the various campus ministries plus the continuous cycle of residents from the kansas city & st. louis area being shuffled into the area, then dispersed back out into larger cities or to their roots.
not to mention the rapidly growing True/False film festival each year where local churches and university students get involved to make it happen.
i could go on. columbia is pretty hip for being in mid-mo.
Yeah, Scum of the Earth in Denver has a few hipsters … but don’t forget the geeks, the punks, the goths, and the drunk homeless people. Oh – and remember the few fifty-somethings (like me, the senior pastor) who are either too old, too fat or too clueless to be anywhere close to hip. I was never even a hippie.
I must confirm your comments about #6. I’m from the Santa Barbara/Ventura end of Los Angeles Land, and the Christian hipster culture is very active here, and is also joined at the hip to the surf culture – i.e. with Britt Merrick /Channel Islands and his Reality church. The most popular local Hawaiian food joint is managed by a Christian, and draws the surfing Christian hipsters like a magnet. It’s interesting how Christian hipster-dom often pairs itself with other cultural niches like surfing or skating or crafts and homemaking (what my Midwestern wife is really into…she has plugged herself into this massive world of Christian women who love crafting and blogging about Christian books and movies and sharing recipes).
-Kevin Ott
http://www.kevinott.net
Hey, Great List… some great churches in Washington DC… did you mean Falls Hill Church? or The Falls Church? The latter is a great church for young folks… I’ve never heard of the former.
Yeah, I meant Falls Church. Don’t know where I got the “Hill” part…
So I’ve been reading your blog for quite awhile, and tonight, i think this is the first time you got it wrong, Brett. Although Portland, OR may be the least churched city in America, coming in at a whopping 2% of regular adult church attenders per Sunday, we hold some mighty weight in American Hipster Christendom. Not only are we home to one of your favorite directors Gus Van Sant; we also have Stumptown Coffee, which made your Hipster Christmas Gift List this year; Skin & Ink Magazine: PDX is a tattoo haven with some pretty big names with large waiting lists (including Alice Kendall at Infinity Tattoos); Imago Dei, home to Rick McKinley & Donald Miller with his best selling, make crazy Californians move to Oregon books; an Indy music scene with great lounges to listen in; but on top of it all: we are the Microbrewery Capital of the America and desire to rival Munich for the title of the World’s Microbrewery Capital (you should check out the Oregon Brewers Festival- I am sure you would enjoy it). Thus Portland, OR as only a honorable mention is a travesty. Portland Oregon the Greatest City on Earth.
PS I do very much enjoy reading your blog.
Thanks Ellen- haha. Portland certainly carries a TON of hipster weight- I’d probably put it in the top 3 of “general hipster” cities. And the Oregon Brewers Festival sounds like a dream. Who knows—maybe Portland will make it higher than honorable mention on the Christian Hipster Cities list in the book version…
Yeah…hmm.
There’s a lot to be said for being set apart. I’m just wondering if we get consumed with being set apart from other Christians in an attempt to seem more relevant to the world.
Couldn’t agree more. I’m definitely not holding up “hipster Christianity” as a good thing to be emulated… it’s just a phenomenon worth discussing. So lists like these are not in any way meant to hold “hip churches” in some sort of esteem as much as they are to get us thinking about what the whole idea of “cool Christianity” actually means.
I want to push two cities that seem oddly left out of the mix. First off would be Philadelphia. Home of mewithoutYou, Denison Witmer, Saxon Shore and Burnt Toast Vinyl records, it is also (in)famously home of The Simple Way (Shane Claiborne), Circle of Hope, and not too far from the Christian colleges Eastern University, Villanova, Philadelphia Biblical University, and others. Fishtown is a quite the hipster area as well.
Also, I want to mention Boston. Reunion Christian Church, CityLife Presby, and International Community Church are all filled with the educated and hip (and usually emaciated). Its also home of Berklee school of music (the hipsters jazz-o-philes would all line up outside of the performing arts center like clockwork and chainsmoke cloves) and tons of other schools Christian (BC, Gordon, ENU, HDS) and otherwise.
That said, I take it that any city could be eligible given enough observation.
Thanks for the suggestions John! Philadelphia and Boston are definitely worthy contenders for top Christian hipster cities… for the reasons you mention. But yeah, I think it’s true that any city could be eligible given enough observation.
Wow. This is a great list, but I am shocked–literally, shocked–that you overlooked Atlanta. In fact, I would actually make the case that Atlanta should be #1. To wit,
1. This is mega-church central and the pinnacle of our mega-church culture is North Point Community Church, led by (arguably) one of the Christian hipster popes, Andy Stanley. (You’d also have to mention the hipster 12 stone Church, the largest Weslyan church…in the world.)
2. Passion is headquartered here and the Giglio crew also runs Six Steps records. Both are hipster huge and both are in Atlanta. If you are a little more business saavy, John Maxwell is also based here.
3. Jensen Franklin, the Pentecostal hipster extraordinaire, and his Free Chapel are here.
4. What undoubtedly tips the scale is Catalyst. The largest Christian hipster gathering on the planet is based and hosted here. (In a totally different category, but worth mentioning, is Gabe Lyons and Q Conference, also based in Atlanta.)
5. Known as “America’s Non-Profit Mecca,” Atlanta is home to some of the biggest hip social orgs are here: Plywood People, Gift Card Giver, Mission Year, Flourish, etc.
So, basically, you have Andy Stanley and Louie Giglio presiding over a mega-church gaggle with the largest gathering of Christian hipsters in America in the midst of a huge Christian record label, Passion, Q, and a plethora of influential Christian social orgs. Not even an honorable mention? Shocked.
Love your work. Keep it up.
Jm
Thanks man- you may have successfully convinced me to add Atlanta to the book version of this list. And you’re right- Nashville should definitely get an HM.
Side note: I might also throw Nashville into the honorable mention category. Biggest Christian record labels, tons of Christian authors, LifeWay, etc.
Funny, I live in Dallas, and wouldn’t imagine Dallas making the list of Where to find Christian hipsters, even in an honorable mention sort of way. What made you put that on the list, maybe I’m just missing the hipsterdom around me?
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This was a relatively accurate list, although I’d have to say Richmond is teaming with Christian hipsters. Williamsburg Brooklyn is where we go to cohabitate, Richmond is where we go to die. I’m surprised Philly didn’t make the list?
I agree with Ellen, that it’s crazy that Portland is not on that list. I actually thought it might be #1 what with Mr.Blue Like Jazz and Imago “we’re sorta catholic” dei. (and the guy that wrote The Shack)
Not too mention all the hipster beer and coffee drinking – bang or beard wearing – leggings sporting – post apocalyptic 80’s clothes wearing – indie rock band epicenter living (i.e Spoon, The Shins, Menomena, 1/2 of Death Cab for Cutie, Decemberists, Modest Mouse. etc and etc) – trader joe shopping – farmers marketing addicted – Voo doo bacon doughnut eating – indie film watching in beer theater – free trade protesters – that make up that town. I think 99% of Portlanders, and the Christians within that 99% hold the title of a hipster. (unlike the somewhat hipster but mostly yuppies to the north).
Although they (I?) would never admit it.
As a life long resident (until recently), and a world traveler (having major time in all the cities listed), I think that I can categorically state that you had it wrong. :-)
Oh, and as a point of contention, Portland has the most Micro Breweries per capita than anywhere in the nation. Ellen, you might be interested to know it has more breweries than Munich as well.
So there’s that.
Um…actually. Christian Hipsters HATE Relevant magazine. Any magazine that uses a word like “Relevant” as its title immediately ceases to be relevant. It’s advertisers are predominantly CCM bands and Colorado Springs publication companies, two more reasons why a “Christian Hipster” would avoid this magazine.
Sorry. But Orlando is boring and has no culture and Relevant magazine, while it might try to pander to the ‘Christian Hipster’ is unfortunately the new CCM magazine.
A big shout out to all our christian brothers and sisters across the USA from us here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. We’re a non-profit start-up, but expecting tremendous blessings.
Love from all at;
http://www.gracemovies.org.
How can a list of Christian hipster cities not include Nashville? It should be number 1 by a long shot, and I think Austin should be at least in the honorable mentions category.
Dallas/Ft Worth/Denton TX should be in the top 5.
Seriously. Philadelphia did not make the top 5? With Shane Claiborne’s Simple Way, to Circle of Hope, to Christian Hipsters biking around this city.. that is crazy.
it seems to me that you’re describing the still yet insular world of evangelicals.
I loved the machiatto shot @ Ebenezzer’s which is pretty cool but is Mark Batterson the only author they promote??? Had to hear the Word at Capitol Hill Baptist Church though which is pretty cool- Mark Dever was humble, lowkey,generous with his time, visitors like myself & new books( got a copy of the trellis & the vine) & was pretty open & honest to questions from the audience on wednesday service-plus there is Greg Gilbert in his summer outfit answering a ? he addressed in his book:)…
But Redeemer’s praise & worship in their 6pm got me, now i wish i live in nyc :)
I just visited the Austin Stone in Austin Texas – the whole community is Hippie Hipsters (Great band name) and this church seems to be at the epi-center. I loved it by the way.
Not sure if you’re still reading responses to this post, but can you recommend any churches or places of gathering in Chicago or the general metro area?
How could you leave Austin, TX off this list? Seriously, have you just not made it down here? It’s the self-proclaimed live music capital of the world and it’s smack dab in the middle of the Bible belt. You better believe there are some Christian hipsters here. Start with Mosaic.
Dear fellow Portlanders- Please clue me in. Where are these elusive hipster churches in Portland that I keep hearing exist, but cannot seem to find anywhere?? Help a sista out. Thanks!
Pdx Hipster church:
Imago Dei (biggest in number)
And the winner for the MOST hipster, albeit smaller, church: The Bridge – hipster’s dream come true
Thank you Teresa! I will be checking out both of those.
Nashville, TN and Columbus, OH
In response to #10 being Orlando, another church with an abundance of hipsters is Discovery Church.
Grand Rapids is spot on.
lived in KC. Definitely a hipster culture. Thanks for the article!
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